LearnRevitAPI

⌨️Use this code to load your custom UI forms in pyRevit

Nov 27, 2024

📊Load WPF in pyRevit

Probably you've heard that WPF is really hard to get started with. Maybe you even tried and failed, and now you are convinced it's impossible to learn it...

However, it's actually not that hard to get started if you know where to start.

Definitions:
WPF - Framework for creating custom UI Forms

XAML - Markup language for creating WPF Front-End Design

🥷pyRevit Hacker - A person necessary to make it all work. Luckily that's who is reading this message right now.

😥 How I Started

Like many of you, I wanted to create a custom UI forms in pyRevit. I read that WPF is the best option, but I had no idea what it means and where to start. And unlike you, I had no Chat GPT....

So therefore, in the old school manner I went on YouTube and found a bunch of tutorials.

But, 99% of WPF tutorials were for C#... And the 1% that mention IronPython weren't that helpful to apply in pyRevit for absolute beginners.

I was about to give up, but then I realized that pyRevit had a bunch of WPF forms with the source code. I tried to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, but I remember that it was really hard for an absolute beginner.

I've spent couple of days and somehow I managed to display my first form. I still had no idea what's going on, and I did too many mistakes on my first try.

But being a stubborn learner I continued experimenting with WPF with the brute force. I made a bunch of simple WPF forms but they were over complicated and I still had very little understanding of what's going on.

✨Here is the Solution✨

So let me save you countless hours or even days of struggling with the most important code snippet you will need.

In general, you need 2 scripts for WPF forms.
XAML script for Front-End Design
IronPython script for Back-End Logic

And the biggest challenge is to connect these 2 files.
That's where majority of pyRevit users fall. But not you!

So, I've attached an image with a code snippet that shows you how to load any XAML file into your class to display it in Revit. That's the first step you need to do to create WPF form.